The Final Five: Black!

Ben BleiweissWednesday, July 09, 2008

ello everyone, and welcome to Building on a Budget, the column dedicated to building decks that cost 30 tickets or less using Magic Online! In the past, we've usually started with a deck list and evolved it over a series of playtesting games, tweaking a card here and a card there. But I thought to myself, "Self, if you were confronted with a random pile of cards, how would you evolve that deck?" And from that thought, we have today's column: black!

Black, as a color in Magic, has many facets. One facet is dedication to the accumulation of power through any means possible. This is played out through sacrifice, self-discard, and loss of life. Black also deals in the supernatural horrific (skeletons, zombies, and the undead), reanimation (tied in to the theme of the dead), discard (again, playing on the theme of horror, except more mental than physical), and the draining of life (Corrupt / Consume Spirit type effects that are vampiric in nature). Black also likes directly killing creatures. Whereas the domain of red is dealing direct damage, the domain of Black is outright removing creatures from the board, with cards like Terror or Shriekmaw. Direct damage in black is usually tied to the vampirism theme.

Now let's talk about rarity. Rarity does not necessarily denote level of power, which is important! Compare Lightning Bolt (common) to Urza's Rage (rare). Lightning Bolt is a much more efficient spell than Urza's Rage: it costs two mana less and deals the same amount of damage. Urza's Rage has some extra perks—can't be countered, can be kickered for a lot of mana—but if you're looking to play the "objectively" better card, you'd probably go with Lightning Bolt.

Thankfully, Magic isn't a game of purely objectively better cards; if that were the case, there would be one deck that always won, and no other decks would stand a chance. Instead, Magic is a game of interaction and strategy—some cards interact better amongst themselves than other cards, and some cards interact against your opponent's cards rather than interacting with your own cards.

Which is better, Nameless Inversion or Last Gasp? Last Gasp will allow you to shrink a creature more easily to chump block it, if you can't kill it outright... but Nameless Inversion can pump your own creature with toughness > 4 to deal an extra 3 damage, interacts with tribal cards (Wort, Boggart Auntie anyone?), and has two card types for Tarmogoyf. Though these two cards are extremely similar (both are black two-mana instants that shrink a creature's toughness by 3 for a turn), they can have wildly different uses and interactions in-game!

So let's tie together the essence of black with the essence of rarity and the interaction of convergent cards. Rare cards tend to be the biggest, splashiest effects in a set. Again, this does not mean objectively more powerful, but it does usually mean more complicated (more lines of text, more rules involvement). Rares tend to be more flavorful than commons, because often commons are doing the grunt work—be a creature with one keyword, destroy an artifact or enchantment, no frills asked. If you're stuck for a place to start a deck, usually you'll look to your rares (or uncommons, in some cases—there are a lot of build-around-me uncommons in Magic) more than your commons for inspiration.

The reason I bring this up? I went through all of the Extended-legal rares available on Magic Online, and made a list of every monocolored one that cost half a ticket or less. I left all artifacts, lands, and gold cards off these lists, but included hybrid cards, because they can be played in a monocolored deck. My goal? Start a deck with twenty-five basic lands and thirty-five completely random low-cost rares (remember, these all cost half a ticket or less, so the total cost of this deck will be 17.5 tickets at most—and many of these rares trade at three for a ticket, four for a ticket, or five for a ticket!).

There were 185 different black rares that cost half a ticket or less on Magic Online, spanning from Invasion through Shadowmoor. I went to www.random.org/integers/ and asked for 35 random integers between 2 and 186 (because column 1 on my spreadsheet was a header column for color). Here's the results I got for the 35 rares for this week's deck:

So you may ask "Ben, this is a completely random deck lacking in any cohesion, and it's filled 100% with rares, aside from the basic lands! How is this either Building or on a Budget?" And my answer is this: 30 tickets or less, folks—and the above deck, we're looking at about 10-12 tickets worth of cards. Moreoever, this is Building on a Budget at probably it's purest form of all! I am taking what is essentially a highlander theme deck of 35 black budget rares, seeing what works and what doesn't, and evolving the deck from there. After the initial 35 rares? All bets are off. I can include any commons, uncommons, or rares that make the cards in the deck work, as long as they stay within the budget. But the catch is that I really want to find which cards interact well with one another, and focus the deck on these cards! Will Nihilistic Glee feed Phyrexian Delver? Will I ever get threshold on Repentant Vampire? Is there anything that can bounce permanents for Warped Devotion (well, probably not—expect this to get cut)? The only way to find out? Shuffle up and let er' rip!

Game 1: Bluevictorious (Golems)

I get down Chainer and Horobi. Bluevictorious gets down a bunch of Golems, drops Mycosynth Golem, plays double Brass Herald for free, puts down four more Golems (including Bosh, Iron Golem) and swings for a zillion on the following turn. If only I had a way to target creatures!

In a deck with a lot of high-cost black cards, I'm finding that 25 lands just aren't enough. For my first cut, I simply take out five cards that don't have much use in this card pool and add in five Swamps. I'd rather get land flooded (especially since I have cards that can take advantage of extra lands, such as Nightmare) than not be able to play any spells at all.

All right, that's my first win! So far, my deck still has a lot of big, clunky creatures, but some of the flyers are quite decent—just a lot to play. I make my next cut of rares that aren't exactly synergistic in this deck and add in four Terrors and a Corrupt as removal.

Time for another round of cuts. Silent Specter has been an absolute beating, and Stronghold Assassin has been a great source of cheap, reusable removal for the deck. I take out some of the Rares in favor of three Assassins and two Specters.

Remember how I said that there are subtle shades of difference in similar-looking removal spells? Right now, my deck is strong at removing creatures... as long as they aren't black. Terror, therefore, is not the solution I'm looking for... but Last Gasp might be! I swap in Last Gasps for Terrors, so that I can kill black creatures (see the above game!). I also bring in two copies of Repentant Vampire for Sengir Vampire and Toshiro, since they also can help kill black creatures late-game.

GHwhyman's opening play is Chrome Mox and Slith Firewalker, and he follows it with Adamaro, First to Desire. I'm dead by turn four, as he hits me for 1 on turn one, 2 on turn two, 10 on turn three, and 9 on turn four (taking a spell to burn out my third-turn chump blocker).

Record: 8-7

If I were to continue onwards with this deck, I might want to focus more on creature-generation effects (Sengir Autocrat, maybe?) to combo better with Stronghold Assassin, and the deck would morph to an air-discard based assault with ground creatures and removal to lock up the ground, while my air force and Wound Reflection finish the opponent in short order. Would I have started a deck with Vampires, Stronghold Assassin, and Wound Reflection? Heck no—and I might never have gotten there if I didn't start there. But that's what's valuable about this exercise, and about theme decks. Magic is a game of ideas and possibilities, and if you expose yourself to enough ideas and possibilities, you might find that your deck building takes you in unexpected and exciting directions!